Yesterday, I posted a very dark, perhaps mysterious poem entitled Evil. Not many comments about it, except a question from Lucy regarding its creation, its creepiness, its seduction......
The legs of this poem were born after a beautiful, blissful day spent at Kapalua Beach in Maui. Three pages describing the beautiful sand, the soft surf, the happiness of family beachgoers and the constancy of the ocean. You might ask, "oh my and how did it become so dark?"
As I underlined the words that jumped out of the stream-of-consciousness prose, (btw - a method of poetry writing to which I was introduced last December) I at first found a poem of grace; then something changed.
As I worked the words, a message of the power of evil rather chilled me. Evil is as constant and predictible as grace, as guileless and comforting in its playful beginnings, lulling its audience into false trust and fearless, unsuspecting, unprepared participation. Evil knows how to seduce me, to romance my ego, glamorize my dreams, lure me into darkness. Lure me so well that I may easily brush away the evidence of evil with a wave of my hand or an acquiescent mindless swoosh like the water's edge caressing the sand. Slipping into the power of evil with no real intention and certainly no fear, I can easily be drowned in its power and damned by my uneducated acceptance of an act that seems harmless at first glance. Ruthlessly, delightfully using its persuasion to lull me into the depths of darkness.
Creepy, seductive, or fair warning? Commenter, Country Parson reminded me that the subject of evil in my poem reminded him of Psalm 73. Reading Psalm 73, I see the correlation of evil's power but I also see the grace and the refuge of those who would see the power of evil and reject it.
I think tomorrow's post will be a reworking of Evil, hope you'll stop by and take a look!
I read your poem yesterday and I felt you captured an aspect of evil that is so very true: the sun dancing on the surface, the strong undertow and the murky depths. The image of Jack Nicholson in the Witches of Eastwick comes to mind.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to go check out psalm 73.
Barbara - Evil is so clever and not acknowledging it occasionally, or often, makes it all the more insidious to our existence. Like your image of "jack" - I can see that evil grin in my head!
ReplyDeletei appreciate your added perspective on the poem...intriguing. i like your response to barbara. so often we like to pretend evil (or darkness) is not present at all. makes me think of jesus speaking to peter, "get behind thee satan!" hmmm.
ReplyDeleteThere's an old Native American story about us having 2 wolves fighting in our heart. One is the bad wolf: anger, sloth, envy, jealousy, greed, hatred, lust. The other is the good wolf: patience, love, joy, generosity, kindness, truthfulness, beauty, peace. Who we feed wins.
ReplyDeleteLucy - thanks for coming back for another read on "evil" - (evil was probably sorry that you did:(
ReplyDeleteRoy - great story from Native American lore! So true!